Soybeans

Soybeans sits in the Oilseed category of USDA commodity accounts, with annual US cash receipts of $46.1B and IL leading the country as the top-producing state. Physical output in the most recent reporting year reached 4.2 billion bushels, a figure that feeds directly into federal price-support, risk-management, and export-promotion programs. The numbers on this page are not estimates — they are drawn from the USDA Economic Research Service Farm Income and Wealth Statistics release and the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Census of Agriculture, the same source files cited by Congress when it drafts the Farm Bill.

State-level concentration matters more than headline totals for soybeans: the top five producers (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, Missouri) account for the majority of national cash receipts, meaning a drought, trade disruption, or disease outbreak in any one of these states reshapes the national price picture within a single marketing year. For farmers, lenders, and policy analysts the per-state share data below is the closest the federal government publishes to a live supply map of the US soybeans industry.

Reading soybeans data in isolation can mislead. Cash receipts capture farmgate revenue, not profit — they sit on top of input costs (seed, fuel, labor, land), federal program receipts, and crop-insurance indemnities that often cushion or amplify year-over-year swings. Use the state breakdown on this page alongside the national commodity rankings and federal program pages to see where soybeans production is expanding, where it is contracting, and where federal dollars are currently flowing — the three questions that drive every serious agricultural investment and policy decision.